Harvest | Page 9

of blue linen; and her feet and legs, shapely but not small, in their khaki stockings and shoes, completed the general effect of lissom youth. The flush and heat of hard bodily work had passed away. She had had time to plunge her face into cold water and smooth her hair. But the atmosphere of the harvest field, its ripeness and glow, seemed to be still about her. A classically minded man might have thought of some nymph in the train of Demeter, might have fancied a horn of plenty, or a bow, slung from the sunburnt neck.
But the vicar had forgotten his classics. _En revanche_, however, he was doing his best to show himself sympathetic and up-to-date with regard to women and their new spheres of work--especially on the land. He had noticed three girls, he said, working in the harvest field. Two of them he recognized as from the village; the third he supposed was a stranger?
"She comes from Ralstone," said Rachel.
"Ah, that's the village where the new timber camp is. You really must see that camp, Miss Henderson."
"I hate to think of the woods coming down," she said, frowning a little.
"We all do. But that's the war. It can't be helped, alack! But it's wonderful to see the women at work, measuring and checking, doing the brain work, in fact, while the men do the felling and loading. It makes one envious."
The vicar sighed. A flush appeared on his young but slightly cadaverous face.
"Of the men--or the women?"
"Oh, their work, I mean. They're doing something for the war. I've done my best. But the Bishop won't hear of it."
And he rather emphatically explained how he had applied in vain for an army chaplaincy. Health and the shortage of clergy had been against him. "I suppose there must be some left at home," he said with a shrug, "and the doctors seem to have a down on me."
Janet was quite sorry for the young man--he was so eagerly apologetic, so anxious to propitiate what he imagined ought to be their feelings about him. And Rachel all the time sat so silent and unresponsive.
Miss Leighton drew the conversation back to the timber camp; she would like to go and see it, she said. Every one knew the Canadians were wonderful lumbermen.
The Vicar's eyes had travelled back to Rachel.
"Were you ever in Canada, Miss Henderson?" The question was evidently thrown out nervously at a venture, just to evoke a word or a smile from the new mistress of the farm.
Rachel Henderson frowned slightly before replying.
"Yes, I have been in Canada."
"You have? Oh, then, you know all about it."
"I know nothing about Canadian lumbering."
"You were on the prairies?"
"I lived some time on a prairie farm."
"Everything here must seem very small to you," said the vicar sympathetically. But this amiable tone fell flat. Miss Henderson still sat silent. The vicar began to feel matters awkward and took his hat from the floor.
"I trust you will call upon me for any help I can possibly be to you," he said, turning to Janet Leighton. "I should be delighted to help in the harvest if you want it. I have a pair of hands anyway, as you see!" He held them out.
He expatiated a little more on his disappointment as to the front. Janet threw in a few civil words. Rachel Henderson had moved to the window, and was apparently looking at the farm-girls carrying straw across the yard.
"Good-night, Miss Henderson," said the young man at last, conscious of rebuff, but irrepressibly effusive and friendly all the time. "I hope you will let your Ralstone girl come sometimes to the clubroom my sister and I have in the village? We feel young people ought to be amused, especially when they work hard."
"Thank you, but it's so far away. We don't like them to be out late."
"Certainly not. But in the long evenings--don't you know?" The vicar smiled persuasively. "However, there it is--whenever she comes she will be welcome. And then, as to your seat in church. There is a pew that has always belonged to the farm. It is about half-way up."
"We don't go to church," said Rachel, facing him. "At least, I don't." She looked at her companion.
"And I can't be counted on," said Janet, smiling.
The vicar flushed a little.
"Then you're not Church of England?"
"I am," said Rachel indifferently; "at least I'm not anything else. Miss Leighton is a Unitarian." Then her eyes lit up with a touch of fun, and for the first time she smiled. "I'm afraid you'll think us dreadful heathens, Mr. Shenstone!"
What the vicar did think was that he had never seen a smile transform a face so agreeably. And having begun to smile, Rachel perversely continued it. She walked to the gate with her visitor, talking with irrelevant